A FAIR and comprehensive consideration of the subject of religious teaching in the public schools presents many objectionable features to the practise. And these features are peculiarly live issues in this hour of the world’s history; because we are nearing the time of prophetic denouement which is to make possible religious persecution in this alleged enlightened age. Indeed God’s true church is fast nearing the time and experience foreshadowed in John 16:2, 3.
These issues must be squarely and practically met by every true lover of true liberty. The unwisdom of placing within the curriculum of public instruction, any expurgated scriptures formulating a system of compulsory or indiscriminate religious training is self-evident. Yet many thousands of alleged lovers of boasted American liberties contend for and laud every effort to foist this, willy-nilly, upon an heterogenous public, representing a symposium of religious and non-religious thought as varied and incongruous as it is possible to be.
Even tho all so-called Protestant religious organizations should, conjointly with the Roman Catholic organization, adopt a categorical and stereotyped system of religious instruction, they must of necessity,—in this union of incompatible religious forces,—bow to the dictation of the papal church, or else precipitate a wider and more pronounced strife than has heretofore existed between these representative organizations. However, these incompatibilities are fast disappearing; and pseudo-Protestantism will yield, until every semblance of schismatic differences are removed, and the daughter has become so like the original, or “mother,” that the family resemblance and relation is patent to all students of God’s Word. And this nation, dominated by this perverted Protestantism forms an “image” to the “beast,” the Rome of the Dark Ages.
For many years there has been great antagonism toward our public-school system by the Catholic clergy, manifesting itself in the withdrawal of thousands of Catholic children from the public schools, and the establishment of numerous parochial schools in which the children of “orthodox” Catholics are educated. There was also a correspondingly energetic effort on the part of the general Catholic organization to divert a part of the public funds to the support of these schools. A self-evident injustice to the general, or representative, taxpayer. This point also will be yielded as the papal leaven continues to work.
Apropos of this point, note the weakening of the government in its attitude on the Catholic Indian School appropriations. Failing to withdraw all the Catholic children from the public schools, the papal hierarchy with well-known subtility and political power, conceived and executed the plan of at least “coloring” public thought with papal and pagan teaching and dogmas by subversive methods; and as a result, to-day the curriculum of the public schools of America presents with its proper teaching a curious conglomeration of pagan legendary and philosophy, and papal dogma and superstition. Out of the public funds is supported a great army of good, bad, and indifferent public instructors the majority of whom are communicants of the Roman Church; that is to say, they would seek the consolations of the “mother church” (Rev. 17:5) in the hour of death. Surely the world, aye, and the church also, have reason to “admire the beast” with a wide-eyed, wondering admiration. Rev. 13:3; 17:6.
Because of these conditions, a considerable class who love God, and accept His Word as the rule of faith in all things, are constrained to establish denominational schools supported by private subscription. At these schools religious instruction consonant with the true Gospel of Christ is taught, and this without defrauding the public treasury, as they, in common with their fellow citizens “render unto Caesar” his rightful tribute.
As a public educational institution without any form of religious instruction, the nominal Christian or agnostic, Jew or Gentile, pagan or Mohammedan, men of every creed, or no creed at all, every shade of belief or no belief at all, may meet on common ground, in common civic fellowship; but the moment the element of religion,—always sectarian, and not possibly otherwise as long as there is more than one sect on earth,—is introduced, then strife, contention, and open rupture between erstwhile friends and associates are sure to follow. Let this movement, started at our nation’s capital, once be established as a criterion of educational methods, and an exodus of adherents of irreconcilable “issues” from our public schools must supervene.
Then will follow the establishment of schools for the “classes;” for class lines will become more strongly marked and more easily discerned than is possible under existing conditions of society.
No follower of the “Golden Rule” can possibly invade the realm of individual consciences. This ground belongs alone to God and the individual! And this is as true of the most incorrigible infidel as of the most devout Christian. No self-respecting person, alive to the evil bound to result from the least coercion of human conscience, can afford to yield his rights of religious liberty. He will earnestly protest against any curtailment of constitutional rights.
Again, compulsory religious training, upon the children of those who are indifferent in their selection of religious belief, and who only conform to public pressure because of this indifference, will only result in cheapening variety of the religion taught, as it will of necessity invite comparison with the existing public-school literature, so at variance with the teachings of pure Christianity, the only basis of which is the eternal character of Jehovah, as disclosed in the “Decalogue.” Yet it is that code now perverted with all the man-made apostolic mutilations and blasphemous additions that misguided men are seeking to force upon the public to gratify the ambitions of a bureau of modern conscience arbiters. Truly the “old Inquisition” is near to be rehabilitated.
How can an unconverted and unconsecrated person as teacher take up any system of religious teaching and make it effective? Or how can a converted and devoted Christian as teacher reclaim a child whose home environments are, in part or wholly, antagonistic to every principle of reform? Indeed it is a fact easily demonstrated that the few hours daily drilling in the literature of the public institution of education, together with the indiscriminate associations of these schools, have, in many cases, a demoralizing effect tending to nullify the best influence of a Christian home.
It is the purpose of denominational church schools to make a valuable auxiliary to the consecrated effort of the home, the church, and the Sabbath-school; that the spiritual influence of these God-given institutions might not be made void by the growing antagonism to the Bible so often manifest in the public school.
Even more dangerous than these are the higher institutions of learning, because of the subtleties and sophistries of their systems of philosophy which are now bearing fruit in the effort to arouse a public sentiment favorable to religious instruction in the public schools. This is a primary entering wedge, ultimately in the complete union of church and state in the near future.
And so the battle goes on. The teachers in every system, high and low—directors and leaders of public opinion, of elastic conscience, or thrifty adaptation to irreconcilable conditions—are seemingly without conception of fidelity to a fixed principle of truth. Matt. 6:24. Rome gains a little here and there with every move. Her opponents little by little conform to her dictum, ever retire as she advances and the whole lump will soon be leavened, becoming a gigantic system of error filling the whole earth, at whose shrine all the world worships, except the “little flock,” who are “faithful even unto death.”
Stanley, N. D.
